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Author. 




Title 



Imprint. 



ADDRESS 



J; M. DICKINSON. 



THE CENTENNIAL 

OF THE ADMISSION ' 



THE STATE OF TENNESSEE 

INTO THE UNION. 



DELIVERED AT NASHVILLE. TENN. 
JUNE \. 1S96. 









••* ^^"^ 



/ 



ADDRESS. 



On June i, 1796, George Washington approved the act 
which made Tennessee the sixteenth State in the Federal 
Union. 

The cession by North Carolina to the United States of 
the territory embraced in Tennessee provided for its State- 
hood, but there was strong opposition to admission at that 
time in both houses of Congress. 

The settlers of Tennessee were imbued with. a constant 
and all-controlling idea of law and order as an expression 
of local government. 

They were irrepressible constitution makers. Where- 
ever they established their settlements, they hardly took 
time to build their houses before they set about construct- 
ing a system of government. 

And so, when the time approached for shedding the 
chrysalis condition of a territorial government, and putting 
on the larger life of Statehood they, following this bent, 
and also profiting by the experience of Kentucky, which 
had repeatedly been rebuffed, anticipated the action of Con- 
gress, took their own census, adopted a constitution, elected 
a Legislature and Governor and inaugurated him, passed 
laws dividing the State into congressional districts, elected 
Congressmen and Senators and presidential electors, and 
were in the exercise of the full functions of a State for a 
month before the bill for admission came up in either house 
of Congress. And what seems almost audacious, her Sen- 
ators presented their credentials, and asked admission to 
the United States Senate before the act was passed. 

It is apparent that even then the question of balance of 
power between the States was a potent, though not an 
avowed factor. 



4 

Vermont, the first accession to the original thirteen States, 
admitted in 1791, was an assured non-slaveholding State, 
though she did not extinguish slaver\^ by constitutional 
provision until 1793. 

Kentucky was admitted in 1792. 

Tennessee, a slave territory, next offered, and her admis- 
sion was the only departure from the system of alternating 
slave and free States, which was unbroken up to the ad- 
mission of Missouri in 1821. 

It is a significant fact that, when the test came in the 
House of Representatives, every member who voted from 
New England was recorded in the opposition, except Israel 
Smith, of Vermont. 

Party interest was a strong undercurrent, for the Federal- 
ists opposed the admission, knowing that the electoral vote 
of Tennessee would certainly be cast for Jefferson. 

William B. Giles, Robert Rutherford, Nathaniel Macon, 
Albert Gallatin and James Madison were earnest advocates 
of her admission. 

Mr. Madison said : 

" The inhabitants of that district of country were at pres- 
ent in a degraded condition ; they were deprived of a right' 
essential to freemen — the right of being represented in Con- 
o-ress. Laws were made without their consent, or bv their 
consent in part only. An exterior power had authority 
over their laws ; an exterior authority appointed their ex- 
ecutive, which was not analogous to the other parts of the 
United States, and not justified by anything but an obvious 
and imperious necessity."* 

Mr. Rutherford said : 

" He did not wish to cavil with this brave, generous peo- 
ple. He would have them taken out of leading strings, as 
they were now able to stand alone ; it was time to take 
them by the hand and to say we are glad to see you stand 
on your own feet. We should not, he said, be too nice 
about their turning out their toes, or other trifles ; they 
will soon march lustily along. They had complied with 
every requisite for becoming a State of the Union — they 
wished to form an additional star in the political hemisphere 



*^An. 4th Cong., p. 1309. 



of the United States — they -have erected a State Govern- 
ment and wish to come into the Union, and to resist their 
claim would be out of character." * 

It is pleasing to note that every one of these names has 
been worthily commemorated in our State. 

The opposition to admission raised a storm of indigna- 
tion among those hardy pioneers, who had, by their per- 
sonal prowess, courage and sufferings, won and held the 
Western frontier, with no aid, even in the darkest hours of 
their trials, from the Atlantic population. 

If Congress interposed vexatious delay, not so the im- 
mortal Washington, for he approved the bill on the day fol- 
lowing its passage. 

General satisfaction and joy hailed the announcement of 
their admission into the Union. 

In July John Sevier, the Governor of the new State, said 
in a message to the General Assembly: 

"I have the pleasure of announcing to you gentlemen 
the admission of the State of Tennessee into the Federal 
Union, a circumstance pregnant with every prospect of 
peace, happiness and opulence to our infant State. 

The period has at length arrived when the people of the 
Southwestern Territory may enjoy all the blessings and 
liberties of a free and independent republic." 

To this the Legislature replied in terms expressive of 
the profoundest satisfaction at the bright future which this 
momentous event vouchsafed. 

These expressions of felicitation and joyful anticipations 
were not rhetorical platitudes. These men were not coin- 
ers of well-turned or glittering phrases, to catch the ear or 
please the fancy. 

Most of them had experienced the hardships of frontier 
life, the abandonment by North Carolina, the uncertainties 
and vexations of tentative governments, the complications 
of the dual sovereignties of North Carolina and the State 
of Franklin, and the dependency of territorial existence. 
They were harrassed with the uncertainty of land titles, 
and, though scarred veterans, looked with dread upon the 
ominous mutterings that came from hoards of bloodthirsty 



*An. 4th Cong., p. 1313. 



savages, all too close, and stimulated by Spanish intrigue. 

No one can doubt that they uttered sober words of earn- 
est conviction when they said to the Governor: 

" We rejoice with you in the event of this State being 
formally admitted into the Federal Union, and our minds 
are filled with the most pleasing sensations when we reflect 
on the prosperity and political happiness to which we view 
it as a certain prelude." 

The loyal sons and daughters of this great commonwealth, 
inspired by that intense love of State which has always 
been a resplendent quality in Tennesseans, and which will 
never abate, unless we become degenerates and apostates 
from the faith of the fathers are assembled to commemorate 
that auspicious day. 

We have come, citizens by birth and citizens by adop- 
tion, of all religions, creeds, and all political parties, seces- 
sionists and unionists. Federal and Confederate, to cele- 
brate the admission of Tennessee into the Federal Union, 
and in that act, notwithstanding the differences which once 
rent us asunder, and were upheld without regard to cost of 
blood and treasure, differences in regard to which our con- 
victions are unaltered, differences which have been settled 
forever by constitutional changes accepted in good and 
abiding faith, to proclaim to the world, without reserve, 
our perfect joy, that Tennessee is to-day an indestructible 
State of an indestructible Union, that Union which our 
fathers helped to establish, that Union which has for its 
national emblem the stars and stripes, which Tennesseans 
have so often borne to bloody victory, and, by this historic 
occasion, to transmit to our children and all posterity, the 
trust of maintaining constitutional liberty, that a hundred 
years hence may be renewed this solemn rite, within a 
Union of preserved integrity, composed of States whose 
uneclipsed stars have suffered no diminution in their mag- 
nitude. 

The self-sacrificing and heroic men who made the epoch 
we celebrate discharged their high trust in their day and 
generation ably and faithfully, created a State, endowed it 
with great potentialities and maintained it in a career of 
honor, prosperity and greatness. 



Under conditions more complex, exigencies more momen- 
tous, demanding a patriotism as unselfish, a courage as 
unfaltering and a judgment that must confront govern- 
mental problems evolved by the march of civilization and 
vitalized by social forces, long dormant, but now aroused 
and aggressive, we bear the trust of to-day. 

Where we stand was once the seat of a dense population 
of unknown people of remote antiquity, who vanished 
from the earth, leaving no record to tell whence they came, 
what they achieved and what were their institutions. Why 
they disappeared is a matter of faint tradition and vague 
conjecture. Whether they themselves planted and nour- 
ished the seeds of decay and perished because they were 
unworthy of existence, or whether a braver or more power- 
ful people swept them into oblivion, we do not know. 

Nature reconquered her own, almost obliterating the 
memorials of this ancient race, so that but little more than 
a hundred years ago the expanse of country where the eye 
is now dazzled and the soul uplifted by the magnificent cre- 
ations of a refined civilization, was undisturbed by man, 
except by the hunting parties of the neighboring Indians. 

Standing upon the graves of an extinct people, we, who 
have passed but a hundred years of State life, which is but 
a span as compared with the existence of races and govern- 
ments which have risen, flourished, decayed and disappeared, 
may well turn aside from our stirring pursuits to consider 
the foundations upon which our commonwealth rests, the 
character and purposes of the men who established it, the 
principles which have directed our progress, and from these 
take our reckoning, that we may the better pursue those 
lines which will tend to perpetuate our institutions, with 
increasing usefulness and honor. 

God grant that we may attain a full sense of the awful 
responsibility resting upon us, and that we may so discharge 
it that a hundred years hence, history shall not record the 
Commonwealth of Tennessee among those governments that 
have only a past, or, if the State survive, that posterity shall 
not stand where we stand to-day, to execrate our memory, 
and charge a decadence upon our unfaithfulness. What 
higher inspiration could we have than that which comes from 



the lives and public services of our forefathers, who wrought 
the fabric which has endured with increasing strength for 
a hundred years? We need not look beyond the qualities 
illustrated by them to learn what we must cherish to make 
a State beneficent and enduring. 

Let those who have no past, no history, no traditions, no 
distinguished men, no patriots, search the records of other 
countries for their exemplars. 

The history of Tennessee, from its very beginning, is 
affluent with the names of illustrious men, whose lives were 
the expression of great moral and intellectual forces, directed 
by pure patriotism. In calling her roll of honor we are 
touched with no sense of regret, except that in such an 
august presence we fain would hide our own diminished 
heads. 

They are our Lares, and while we are gathered to offer 
them incense and libation and deck their altars with gar- 
lands of violets and rosemary, let us impress upon our minds 
and hearts their lives and public services, and make them 
our own, so that though incorporeal, their spirits shall 
abide with us as a real presence, and that they, as Ajax of 
old in the place always left vacant for his spirit in the ranks 
of the Greeks, shall seem to march by our sides to inspire 
and aid us. And who can doubt, if the dead can revisit the 
scenes of their earthly love, that they at this moment, with 
a gaze that penetrates the veil that hides our secret motives 
and convictions from each other, are about us, approving 
all we say and do for our country's good, and scorning all 
who desecrate this day by seeking selfish ends? 

And in what an imposing assembly do we stand, sur- 
rounded by that radiant company of men, who created the 
era we celebrate ! With reverential awe we salute them. 

James Robertson, the mighty hunter, the patriarch of 
the Watauga o.nd founder of the Cumberland settlement. 
Though without "a noble lineage to boast of, and the 
escutcheoned armorials of a splendid ancestry," his heroic 
life revealed a nobility under a patent sealed by a higher 
source than earthly potentate. Indebted to his wife lor 
elementary instruction, he discharged successfully respon- 
sibilities, many and varied, requiring knowledge, wisdom 
and diplomacy. 



9 

Born in Virginia in 1742, he left North Carolina in 1770, 
and crossing alone the Appalachian Mountains came to the 
lovely valley of the Watauga. By his momorable defense 
of Watauga fort he achieved a renown which, if he had 
done nothing else, would make him immortal in the his- 
tory of Tennessee. He was one of the founders of the 
Watauga Government in May, 1772, which had the first 
written constitution adopted by American freemen. Alone 
he followed the great war trace to the Cherokee towns, 
entrusted himself to the Indians aroused by outrage to 
fierce hostilities, and by the weight of his character, his 
dauntless courage and address, averted a bloody war. 

He rendered distinguished services in the battle of Kana- 
wha, prevented by his overmastering will the abandonment 
of the settlement at Nashville, to replenish their exhausted 
supply of powder heroically crossed alone the mountains 
and ran the gauntlet of hostile savages, saved by his alert- 
ness and valor the garrison of Fort Freeland, fought the 
battle of the Bluffs in 1781, which assured the existence of 
the Cumberland settlement, led the invasion of the Indian 
country, and achieved the victory of Coldwater. 

He was the leading spirit in forming the self-constituted 
government in 1780, Chairman of Committee of Arbitra- 
tors, North Carolina Indian Commissioner, member and 
Chairman of Committee of Notables, member of the Gen- 
eral Assembly of North Carolina from Davidson County in 
1787, appointed by Washington in 1790 Brigadier General 
for the Mero District and wounded in an Indian engagement 
in 1792. He organized and directed the famous Nickajack 
expedition in 1794, and was Trustee of Davidson College. 
He closed his eventful life in 1814 at the Chickasaw Agency 
and in the service of his country. 

Throughout the fourteen years of constant war which 
raged on the Cumberland, in which that frontier people en- 
dured hardships, dangers and sufferings, unsurpassed by 
any people of any time, his wisdom and courage were 
always conspicuous. 

In the life of James Robertson is recorded the early civil, 
political and military history of Tennessee. 

Shame upon the State, shame upon us all, that the re- 



10 

commendation made by Gov. Carroll in 1827 ^^^ never 
been carried out, and that no statue of this heroic man 
adorns the entrance to our capitol, to inspire in the youth 
of the land a noble emulation of his patriotic life. If not 
there, then let it be set up in the capitol of the nation, to 
challenge comparison with the honored representatives of 
other States. 

If he had lived in England, Old or New, his deeds would 
have been immortalized in deathless song, his form and 
lineaments fixed in living marble or uncorroding bronze. 

May the patriotic fervor of this centennial year not spend 
itself in clamor and parade, but rather may we bring to 
the memory of the past a true and earnest worship that will 
not cease until Tennessee shall have her ' ' Hall of Fame ' ' 
tenanted by similitudes of her immortals. 

By Robertson stands John Sevier, born in Virginia in 
1744, of Huguenot ancestry, one of the famous founders of 
Watauga, Clerk of the Watauga Commissioners, a member 
from the District of Washington of the Provincial Con- 
gress at Halifax in 1776, a hero of Kings Mountain, a 
memorable service commemorated by North Carolina by 
presentation of a sword and pistols, made Colonel by 
North Carolina in 1780, fought in the same year the battle 
of Boyd's Creek, one of the hardest contests in the border 
wars of Tennessee, and saved the settlements from a bloody 
invasion, President of the convention assembled at Jones- 
boro in 1784 to provide for the public safety, after the ces- 
sion act of North Carolina, while the United States had 
not accepted the territory', and the country was a political 
orphan, one of the founders and the Governor of the State 
of Franklin, elected a member of the Cincinnati in 1787, 
first member of Congress from the great valley of the Mis- 
sissippi, member of the Geneial Assembly of the Territory 
of the United States south of the Ohio in 1794, author of 
the bill in the Territorial Assembly which in 1795 estab- 
lished Washington College, first Governor of Tennessee, 
which office he held for twelve years, again elected to Con- 
gress, representing the Knoxville district, appointed by 
Washington to establish an Indian boundary in Alabama, 
elected to Congress for the third time and without his 



1 



11 

knowledge, a victor in thirty-five battles, who never re- 
ceived compensation for but one of all the campaigns in 
which he served, died in the Creek Nation while on public 
service, and was buried with the honors of war. 

Such is a brief but incomplete epitome of the life of this 
remarkable man. 

The brilliant Phelan says: "Of all whose fame was 
attained within the limits of this State, the most illustrious, 
the most conspicuous, the one whose name was and deserves 
to be the most resplendent was John Sevier. ' ' * 

May the day never come when the youth of Tennessee 
shall be so recreant to the memory of those who made her 
histor}' glorious, as to cease to enthuse at the mention of 
the name of John Sevier, ardent, impulsive, energetic, fluent 
in speech, wise in council, gentle in peace, a thunderbolt 
in war, the large-hearted, generous man, who exercised that 
hospitality of which we are so boastful, but which, alas ! is 
becoming almost traditional, of whom it might be said as 
Homer wrote of Axylus : 

" And greatly was he loved, for courteously 
He welcomed to his house, beside the way, 
All comers." 

Joseph McMinn, a man of sound education, a farmer from 
Pennsylvania, a soldier of the Revolutionary War, member 
of the lower house of the territorial government embracing 
Tennessee, Speaker of the Senate in 1807, three times Gov- 
ernor of Tennessee, and the first person to give an impetus 
to the movement which resulted in the improvement of the 
navigation of our rivers. 

Wm. Cocke, one of the earliest pioneers, a brilliant orator, 
who pursued a distinguished and honorable career, a mem- 
ber of the Jonesboro convention, commissioner of North 
Carolina, a member of the lower house of the State Terri- 
torial government, and one of the first United States Sen- 
ators from Tennessee. 

John McNair}-, a learned lawyer, and one of the first 
Judges of Tennessee. 

Archibald Roane, one of the first Judges of Tennessee, 
Governor in 1801, and the preceptor of Hugh L. White, 

* History of Tennessee, 249-50. 



12 

Wm. Blount, of distinguished lineage, a friend of Wash- 
ington, refined in manner, accomplished in oratory, lavish 
in hospitality, an avowed aristocrat, stately, dignified and 
courtly, territorial Governor of Tennessee, one of the two 
first Senators sent by Tennessee to the United States Sen- . 
ate, who, however much his national fame was obscured, 
Tennesseans will always rememember gratefully, and honor 
for his distinguished services to the State. 

James White, of Scotch-Irish descent, founder of Knox- 
ville, and always distinguished as the father of Hugh L. 
White, whose career has shed such lustre upon Tennessee. 

Greatest of them all is Andrew Jackson, a soldier in bat- 
tle at the age of 14, attorney for the Western district of 
North Carolina, first Congressman from Tennessee, United 
States Senator at the age of 30, Supreme Judge of Tennes- 
see at 33, Major-General of Tennessee^ led volunteers at the 
first outbreak of the war of 181 2, and though suffering pain- 
fully from a wound hastened with his command to Natchez, 
relieved the sufferings of his troops with $5,000 advanced 
from his own purse, the prospect of war having disappeared 
in that quarter, ofiered his services to Washington, and pro- 
posed to increase his forces and plant the American flag on 
the walls of Maiden, made Brigadier General of the United 
States in 1814, successfully conducted, with never failing 
victory, the Creek war, the most terrible Indian war in our 
annals, and by it gave to the Union, Alabama, part of Miss- 
issippi, part of Tennessee, and the highway to the Floridas, 
planted the American flag upon the Spanish fortress of Bar- 
rancas, hastened to the relief of New Orleans, and humbled 
the pride of the British lion by the most signal victory in 
the annals of history, in 181 7 marched against the Semi- 
noles and pursued them into Spanish territory, placed the 
American eagle on St. Marks and above the ancient towers 
of St. Augustine, Governor of Florida in 1821, again elected 
to the United States Senate, twice President of the United 
States, and the canonized patron saint of the oldest existing 
political party. 

Courtliest to women, most dominating among men, he 
charmed the one and ruled the other. Fierce in passion, 
yet tender in heart, he turned aside in the midst of the car- 



]3 

nage of battle to take up and place in safety an Indian babe 
clinging to the bosom of its dead mother. Exalting the 
blessings of peace, yet he conld be so stirred by the joy of 
battle as to exclaim at New Orleans: 

"Welcome thou first visitor from a British mortar, long 
have I sought to meet you — now is our day of reckoning." 

Though imbued with Democratic simplicity, yet, because 
they were the expression of the sovereignty of the people, 
he exalted the offices he held, and demanded for them, and 
enforced obedience and respect. Undazzled by the glare 
which beat about the pinnacle of fame which he reached, 
and loyal to the sentiments, which he believed to be the life 
of free institutions, he declined to accept the marble sar- 
cophagus of Septimus Severus, which was tendered, that it 
might in due time receive the form of one whose illustrious 
deeds had filled the world, saying that it was not becoming 
that the ashes of a republican should repose in what had 
been fashioned to receive the body of an emperor. 

Punctilious as to his personal reputation, he was no less 
sensitive to that of his country, and when the French Gov- 
ernment intimated that an apology from him as President 
would avert complications, he replied : 

" The honor of my country shall never be stained by an 
apology from me for the statement of truth and the perform- 
ance of duty. ' ' 

The fleeting years have not dimmed the memory of him, 
nor obscured his greatness. More than any other man, his 
personality has been impressed upon the American people. 

Whenever a great crisis comes, when unassailable in- 
tegrity, indomitable will, unflinching courage, and a pa- 
triotism that has no sense of self are wanted, the minds of 
all turn to him with one accord, and they exclaim, " Would 
there were now an Andrew Jackson. " 

He of all men presented to the world the most inexorable 
will, the most resolute heart : 

" From orbs convulsed should all the planets fly, 
World rush on world and ocean mix with sky ; 
He unconcerned would view the falling whole ; 
And still maintain the purpose of his soul." 

These, with the exception of Sevier, were some of the 
men who composed the constitutional convention of 1796. 



14 

While Sevier was not a member of the convention, he 
was then the foremost man of the time and influenced its 
proceedings. 

Of them Mr. Bancroft said : 

''They came together full of faith and reverence, of love 
to humanity, of confidence in truth. In the simplicity of 
wisdom they framed their constitution ; acting under higher 
influences than they were conscious of. 

They wrought in sad sincerity, 
Themselves from God they could not free ; 
They builded better than they knew ; 
The conscious stones to beauty grew." * 

They are but types of their associates, and were expo- 
nents of the sentiments, principles and forces that distin- 
guished the period we commemorate. They alone neither 
made the State, nor constituted its strength. With them 
stood others too numerous to name on this occasion, whose 
lives were generously devoted to the work that was ac- 
complished. 

Close up to them was ranged a constituency, which, in 
their general characteristics, approximated their leaders 
more nearly than has been the case at any subsequent 
period of our history. It is a significant fact that of the 112 
names affixed to a petition and remonstrance from Watauga 
settlement in 1776, to North Carolina, all but two were 
written by the parties themselves, f 

They founded a State in the wilderness, and made that 
epoch in our history which we celebrate to-day. 

What cardinal principles did they illustrate and impress 
upon the Government they created ? What did they con- 
sider necessary for securing happiness, prosperity, strength 
and endurance? 

We are not at a loss to answer these questions. They 
stand out with emphatic prominence in their history. Un- 
like most of our other settlements, they preceded govern- 
ment, and took no constituted authority with them. No 
people with such primitive surroundings ever turned with 
more direct and intense purpose to the establishment of a 

* Eulogies of Jackson, p. 36. 
t Ramsey, p. 138. 



15 

social system on a solid basis, and assuring its expansion 
and permanence by a recognition and practical application 
of those forces which always tend to larger life, increasing 
power and stability. 

Religious faith, the substratum and living force in all 
social order, freedom of religion, the first flower of liberty, 
education, the imponderable, unseen, but potent and im- 
measureable power, which vitalizes and uplifts society and 
endows its possessors, whether individuals or nations, with 
superior advantages in the sharp conflict of life, patriotism, 
which, with altruistic devotion, effaces self and sacrifices 
personal advantage to the public good, economy in the ad- 
ministration of public affairs, the preservation of order and 
the enforcement of law, the democratic principle which 
allows the largest liberty to the individual consistent with 
social order, these composed the constellation of vivifying 
and conserving principles which they illustrated, and 
which have been the source of all our greatness. 

Religion. 

With the rifle in one hand and the Bible in the other, 
they crossed the Appalachian Mountains. The churches 
and the block -houses were coeval. Church organization 
and church government preceded and furnished the inspir- 
ation, and, in a large sense, the model for their social com- 
pacts. They held their religious services with their trusty 
weapons at hand in their rude churches, and literally 
obeyed the divine injunction of "Watch and pray." No 
one can doubt that they were sustained and soothed in their 
hardships, dangers, sufferings and bereavements by a devo- 
tion and faith that admitted no materialistic theories, ever 
extended the horizon of what they wrought for, beyond the 
limitations of a narrow selfishness, and inspiring them with 

the conviction: 

" 'Tis not all of life to live 
Nor all of death to die," 

nerved them for that heroism displayed, not in bursts of 
enthusiasm, amidst the flourish of martial trumpets, with 
the world looking on to applaud or condemn, but in ob- 
scurity, with constancy and patience, throughout a longer 



16 

period than the Trojan war, or the march of the ten thou- 
sand, or our struggle for independence, with no assurance 
that their achievements would find a chronicler, or that 
the memory of their self-sacrifice would be enshrined in 
the hearts of a grateful posterity. The religious atmos- 
phere in which our infant State drew its first inspirations 
exerted an influence more potent that all others in shaping 
the ideas which have controlled our social organization. 

The church spiritual was the church militant, and in 
those stirring conflicts it was the church triumphant. 

As the Metropolitans in the Caucasus girded the sword, 
and led their flocks against Tamerlane and the invaders 
who threatened their faith, so did these pious pioneers of 
religion inspire and lead — and often to death — this advance 
ofuard of Christian civilization. 

Of the men who planted religion in Tennessee, and who 
were the leaders and inspiration of the time, were those 
learned, pious, sturdy, aggressive, hard-necked Scotch- 
Irish Presbyterians, who were the first to resist British ag- 
gression, lighted the fires that burst out at the Alamance, 
and framed and promulgated the Mecklenburg declaration, 
the first pronunciamento of independence ever made in 
America. 

Shortly after them came the Baptists, no less earnest and 
patriotic. 

Methodism came later, only becoming influential after 
the Revolution, but its growth was wonderful, and its im- 
press upon religious life in Tennessee has been greater than 
that of any other denomination. 

While these pioneers may have been intolerant of those 
who held to no religion, they were absolutely tolerant of 
all religions. They were not like the pilgrim fathers, who 
souo-ht a freer air for religious liberty, but allowed no lib- 
erty of religion that did not conform to their own. In 
Watauga absolutelreligious liberty prevailed. 

The Cumberland Constitution recognized a ' ' Divine 
Providence," but put no religious test for the exercise of 
any right of citizenship or the enjoyment of any govern- 
mental privilege. 

The Constitution of Franklin has not been preserved, 



17 

and nothing in respect of it can be positively affinned on 
this point. 

The Constitution of 1796, the first Constitution made for 
and by all Tennesseans, the Constitution of the day we 
celebrate, the Constitution created by those earnest men of 
such deep conviction and reverential nature that they 
opened their convention, not merely with prayer, but by a 
formal sermon by the Rev., Samuel Carrick, established 
unlimited religious liberty. 

Believing that religion was the conserving principle of 
civilization, they also believed in a religion of love, and 
not of proscription or law, one that was to prevail by a 
conquest of the mind and heart, and not by the fierce pro- 
pagandism of fanaticism and oppression. Knowing that a 
State founded on the consent of the governed must look 
for its development and greatness to the patriotic endeavor 
of all its citizens, with no part of them ostracised or sus- 
pended from political fellowship, but with all inspired by 
that proud sense of sovereign power and individual respon- 
sibility which is the life and strength of republics, they 
declared that: 

" No religious test shall ever be required as a qualifica- 
tion to any office or public trust under this State. ' ' 

The wisdom of man coiild not improve upon this decla- 
ration. It was literally preserved in the Constitution of 
1834, and again, after having been proven for three-quarters 
of a century, was repeated in the Constitution of 1870. 

It is imbedded in the organic law of the State, and comes 
to us with the sanction of a hundred years. It commands 
our obedience to its spirit as well as to its letter. It will 
never be torn from the Constitution, nor be practically an- 
nulled by political action, so long as the spirit of American 
libert}- dominates our people. Woe to those who shall give 
occasion for such a contest! Woe to those who shall make 
of insufficient conditions a pretext for it! They will be 
foes to society and enemies of Christian civilization. 

Education. 

The school, no less than the church, marked from the 
beginning the progress of civilization westward from the 
mountains. 



18 

The church and the school went pari passu. The min- 
isters of the one were the votaries of the other. 

As said by Caldwell, the scholarly commentator upon 
our Constitution: "We trace the line of their southward 
and westward progress by a cordon of colleges and acade- 
mies. The names of Doak, Carrick, Balch and Craighead 
survive to us mainly because they were pioneers of edu- 
cation." 

To Samuel Doak, a native of Virginia, student of Prince- 
ton, tutor at Hampden Sydney, soldier of the Revolution, 
Presbyterian minister, builder of the first church in Ten- 
nessee, is due the distinction of establishing in Washington 
County, in 1788, the first literar)- institution in the Missis- 
sippi Valley. 

The Houston Constitution, proposed in 1784 for the State 
of Franklin, while not adopted on account of some im- 
practicable features, is, nevertheless, a reflex of the senti- 
ment of the times. It put a high premium on education 
by providing that no one should be eligible to office " not 
a scholar to do the business, nor unless acquainted with the 
laws of the countr}' in some measure, but particularly with 
ever}' article of the Constitution. " It provided for the en- 
couragement of all kinds of useful learning, the creation 
of a university near the centre of the State, and looked to 
the establishment of grammar schools in every county 
" under masters of approved morals and abilities."* 

The only thing that discredits the sagacity of the time 
was a provision that excluded all lawyers from the Legisla- 
ture. The offense in the discrimination is somewhat atoned 
for by the fact ihat in this respect they were put in the re- 
spectable company of ministers of the gospel and doctors 
of physic. 

The State of Franklin signalized its earliest legislation 
by an act "for the promotion of learning in Washington 
County," which rechartered Martin Academy, and was the 
first legislative act west of the Alleghanies for the encour- 
agement of learning, t 

* Ramsey, 332. 

t Constitutional History of Tennessee, Caldwell, p. 65. 



19 

In 1785 was established Davidson Academy, which in 1803 
became Davidson College, with Thomas B. Craighead as its 
President and Andrew Jackson and James Robertson on its 
Board of Trustees. 

In 1794 Blount College was established under the Presi- 
dency of Samuel Carrick. 

The early legislation and messages of the Governors all 
bear testimony to the profound interest manifested in the 
cause of education. 

That our achievements in general education are not to- 
day commensurate with those early efforts, we are bound 
to admit. 

This should be an occasion for honest introspection and 
pledges for the future, as well as for glorifying the past. 

We cannot obliterate accusing facts by empty boastful- 
ness. We have no monopoly of the knowledge of our 
status on the subject of education and, if we would, we 
cannot shut out from the world what the published census 
of the United States discloses. 

The population of Tennessee, 10 years of age and over 
in 1890 was 1,276,631. Of this number, 240,140 were il- 
literates, being 26.6 per cent. Of the colored population, 
54.2 per cent, were illiterates. 

The scholastic population for 1895 was 720,623, and the 
average daily attendance at school was but 338,330, and 
those enrolled were only 478,125. 

This is not a pleasing subject to contemplate. If it were 
irremediable, I would pass it by in silence and sorrow. We 
know, and the world must know, that it is largely the re- 
sult of the civil war, which raised to citizenship an uned- 
ucated mass, and precipitated this burden of ignorance upon 
a people reduced to penur>', by the withering simoom that 
had swept over them. Let the historian search out and ex- 
plain the causes, if he will. We are confronted with a 
condition which no delving into the past can ameliorate. 

An awakened interest and more progressive methods have 
marked recent years. The per cent, of illiterates, from 
1880 to 1890, was reduced from 38.7 to 26.6 per cent. A 
greater improvement will doubtless be shown by the next 
census. Tennessee will arouse herself and dissipate the 



20 

dark cloud of ignorance which is so threatening. Upon 
this will largely depend our rank in the march of civiliza- 
tion. 

It will be glory enough for this Centennial year, and will 
consecrate it to all posterity, if we shall signalize it by 
kindling anew the torch of education at the altars erected 
by those early pioneers, and by bringing to the work the 
same zeal manifested by them, inaugurate a system which 
will rapidly carry light, strength, life and hope, and the 
knowledge of the institutions which we would perpetuate, 
into every humble home from the crest of the Great Smokies 
to the banks of the Great River, the one figurative of the 
strength and majesty of a people, with secure and broad 
foundation looking up to the light and the truth, the other 
of the mighty and constant flow, with which the stream of 
knowledge sweeps on, bearing argosies filled with rich 
blessings on its bosom. 

I have spoken alone of the common school education. 
We can point with satisfaction to our higher institutions of 
learning, efficient to-day and progressive with the age. 

Nashville has achieved, and holds without rival, the 
proud distinction of being called the Athens of the South. 
No other city in America of equal size has so many flour- 
ishing educational institutions. Many students from other 
cities and States gather in her halls of learning. Does it 
bring a rich harvest of shekels to her marts ^ Perchance 
it may; but who will stop to count the sordid gains of riches 
that take wings and fly away in contemplating the glad- 
some light of strength and purity which is poured into the 
lives of the youth of this land, a light whose effulgence 
does not become spent, but transmitted from sire and mother 
to daughter and son, goes forth in multiplied rays for the 
upbuilding and strengthening of our beloved South ? 

Patriotism. 

With all their differences in antecedents, purposes, and 
mental equipment, there was one spirit that animated all 
our pioneer fathers : A pure patriotism always burned, with 
a steady flame. A sentiment, or impulse, enters the hearts 
of a people, flames out and with resistless force carries all 



21 

before it, and becomes the genius of the epoch. Such was 
the restless spirit which in the fifteenth century impelled 
hardy adventurers to seek for unknown worlds. 

Such was the zeal which fired the heart of the crusader, 
to turn his face from a smiling- fortune and yearn with the 
hope of leaving his bones to bleach upon the plains of Pal- 
estine. Such was the devotion to a cult of liberty, which 
they thought was to regenerate the world, that gave the 
sublime sacrifices of the men and women of the French rev- 
olution. 

Within a narrower sphere of action, far from the centre, 
yea, upon the very periphery of civilization, with no inspi- 
ration of royal commission, or pontifical blessing, with no 
dazzling pageantry, pomp and circumstance of glorious war 
to stir the imagination, with no orator to incite, no painter 
to immortalize, no poet to sing, these plain men, looking 
beyond the horizon of personal interest and temporary ad- 
vantage, showed a devotion no less heroic. " If we fail," 
said one, "it must never be from cowardice. " Bledsoe, 
with prophetic eye that contemplated his own sad end, 
said : " If we perish here, others will be sure to come — either 
to revenge our death or to accomplish what we have begun. 
If they find not our graves or our scattered bones, they may 
revere our memories, and publish to the ages to come that 
we deserved a better fate. ' ' 

Robertson said : ' ' These rich and beautiful lands were 
not designed to be given up to savages and wild beasts. 
The God of Creation and Providence has nobler purposes 
in view." 

And so they and their companions stood for more than 
self throughout those years of blood. Bledsoe fell, but his 
memory survives. Robertson, twice wounded, saw his 
brother and two sons go down in the strife, but he lived to 
see a glorious fruition. 

The genius that filled their hearts was love of country — 
that unselfish passion which is the spark of divinity in man. 
The love of parents, wife and offspring is natural, and often 
burns most intensely in those who are most sordid. It is 
for those we know, and should be reciprocal. Ofttimes it 
brings a rich return, and while it sows with one hand, it 
reaps a harvest with the other. 



22 

The bonds of friendship are mntual, and if burdens must 
be taken up, they, at least, are borne for those with whom 
our hearts have communed. 

Even the devotion that religion inculcates springs from 
a sense of immeasurable obligation, and bound up with it 
is a personal hope of immortal bliss. 

The love of the patriot is spontaneous, it takes root in the 
soil of self-sacrifice, brings its richest tribute in the times 
of darkest despair, and immolates its votaries for the good 
of those unborn. Their sorrows are always of the present. 
The joys most often gladden other hearts, and the lo Tri- 
umphe is shouted by voices that cannot penetrate the silence 
of their graves. It is a passion, an inspiration, a divinity, 
that leaps beyond the span of mortal life and projects itself 
into the ages to come. 

It is the seal of man's faith in immortality. 

Those men were touched with the purifying flame, and 
when they approached the altar of sacrifice they counted 
not the cost. 

It was Robertson who said: "It is a matter of no reflec- 
tion to a brave man to see a father, or a brother, fall in the 
field of action. ' ' 

Did the gaunt wolf of Rome suckle a race of more deter- 
mined warriors ? 

They put into their Constitution: "That no citizen of 
this State shall be compelled to bear arms, provided he will 
pay an equivalent, to be ascertained by law. ' ' 

Were they tired of war ? Did they hope for perpetual 
peace ? Did they expect to fight their battles with mer- 
cenaries ? They left behind no record of their debates, and 
no explanation. Coming from the hands of Robertson, 
Cocke, Jackson, and their associates, none is needed. They 
knew its protection would only be invoked for the infirm, 
that " noblesse oblige " would be the watchward of Ten- 
nesseans, and that they would give to the world the sublime 
spectacle of a volunteer soldiery. Her sons have never 
waited for their country to utter a call of distress. They 
have always borne upon their shields the proud device, " I 
volunteer. ' ' 

This spirit is a heritage that has been transmitted, un- 



23 

diminished to this day. The patriotism of Tennesseans 
has lost none of its intensity. Neither time, nor luxnr\', 
nor the civil war has cooled their ardor. If their country 
shall need their services, let other States look to their 
laurels, for Tennesseans will find a place "near the music 
of the guns. ' ' 

Let not Spain, nor England, cherish the delusion that 
Tennessee wall, on account of the civil war, be disaffected 
or falter in her support of the American flag. If the oc- 
casion shall come, Spain will hear, renewed from their de- 
scendants, the stern defiance which rang from Tennesseans 
when they planted the stars and stripes upon the walls of 
Pensacola, and England will again be greeted with the 
hospitality that welcomed at Chalmette the flower of her 
chivalry. 

Preservation of Order and Enforcement of Law. 

The men of 1796 and their antecessors in Tennessee glori- 
fied the law. They tolerated no conception of society that 
was not founded on a stable government, and to them gov- 
ernment meant the firm and just administration of the law 
by its accredited agents. 

Of them, Mr. Bancroft said : " At a time when European 
society was becoming broken in pieces, scattered, disunited, 
and resolved into its elements, a scene ensued in Tennessee 
than which nothing more beautifully grand is recorded in 
the annals of the race. These adventurers in the wilder- 
ness longed to come together in organized society. The 
overshadowing genius of their time inspired them with 
good designs and filled them with the counsels of wisdom. 
Dwellers in the forest, freest of the free, bound in the 
spirit, they came up by their representatives, on foot, on 
horseback, through the forest, along the streams, by the 
buffalo traces, by the Indian paths, by the blazed forest 
avenues, to meet in convention among the mountains at 
Knoxville, and frame for themselves a Constitution."* 

They came to establish communities and found a State 
that was to endure. They knew that art and science, learn- 
ing and civilization, and all the blessings they bring in 

* Eulogies of Jackson, page 35. 



24 

their train, would never flourish if justice — the very key- 
stone of the arch that supports society — was to be pushed 
from place by the fury of an irresponsible mob. 

The settlers of the Watauga, having no prorection by 
the administration of the law of North Carolina, did not 
turn to the rude methods of the barbarian, but established 
a government and laws, and administered them with jus- 
tice, promptness and firmness. Their petition to North 
Carolina is replete with this sentiment. 

Even within the territory of the State of Franklin, dis- 
tracted by the conflicts of two administrations, from 1784 
to 1788, when passions were aroused and factions prevailed, 
but two deaths from violence were recorded, almost no 
bloodshed, and little violation of the rights of property. 

The Constitution of Cumberland, made in 1780, at Nash- 
borough, the present site of Nashville, recited: 

" As this settlement is in its infancy, unknown to gov- 
ernment, and not included within any county within North 
Carolina, the State to which it belongs, so as to derive the 
advantages of those wholesome and salutary laws, for the 
protection and benefit of its citizens, we find ourselves con- 
strained, from necessity, to adopt this temporar}^ method 
of restraining the licentious, and supplying, by unanimous 
consent, the blessings flowing from a just and equitable 
government. ' ' 

As said of them by Roosevelt: 

"The government was in the hands of men who were 
not only law-abiding themselves, but also resolute to see 
that the law was respected by others, "f 

Democracy, to them, did not mean mobocracy. 

James Robertson, John Sevier, Andrew Jackson, and 
their contemporaries, would have spurned with indignation 
the very suggestion that in time of peace they did not have 
virtue and manhood enough to enforce the law. 

What more illustrious example was ever given of respect 
to the majesty of the law than that of the conqueror of New 
Orleans, flushed with victory, appearing to answer a charge 
of contempt, and directing the trembling judge, overawed 

* Ramsey, 440. 

t Winning of the West, 362. 



25 

by the enraged populace, to do his duty and fearlessly up- 
hold the law ? 

The men of 1796 were all inured to war, but they waged 
war that they might have peace, and to them peace did not 
mean violence, nor the usurpation by frenzy of the seat of 
justice. They, as we of to-day, wished to attract those who, 
as the Watauga people expressed it, would ' ' improve agri- 
culture, perfect manufactures, encourage literature, and 
everything truly laudable. ' ' 

They knew that nothing was so repellant as lawlessness. 
They not only established a government and made the law, 
but they never lost confidence in their ability to enforce it. 

They are the only people known to history who had the 
nerve to deal with the mother-in-law. Their records show 
that one Hogan unlawfully detained a kettle, that the court 
awarded its possession to the plaintiff, and that the defend- 
ant and his mother-in-law were made to pay the costs. Since 
that day we have had none but amiable mothers-in-law in 
the State of Tennessee. 

Gov. Sevier, in his message of 1799, said: "The laws and 
regular decorum are duly observed and supported through- 
out the government. ' ' 

If there be any one here to-day who believes in the rule 
of the mob, he can claim no fellowship with the men whose 
memory we honor. If there be in this State any commu- 
nity that would supinely yield itself to this cankering virus, 
that destroys all wholesome life in the body politic, and 
makes it a polluted wreck, swayed by passion and inca- 
pable of the ordinary administration of law, let them claim 
no heritage in the virtues that distinguished the epoch we 
celebrate. 

Democracy in its Governmental and Not Party Sense. 

The distinguishing feature that stood out in all of the 
efforts made by the people of Tennessee toward establishing 
constitutional government, and one that strongly contrasted 
with the systems of the older States, was the broad princi- 
ple of democratic equality, and the rule of the people. 

Few of the early inhabitants were men of wealth, or of 
distinguished ancestry. There was in those early days com- 



26 

paratively little manifestation of social caste, or of an aris- 
tocracy founded either on wealth or family prestige. The 
communities, composed of men starting on nearly equal 
terms, strong in purpose, robust in every element of manly 
character, independent in spirit and untrammeled by the 
prejudices and inherited conditions of an established social 
and political order, framed a government adapted to their 
views of free republican institutions. 

Watauga was the first government of English-speaking 
people that had universal suffrage and absolute religious 
freedom. * 

This intense feeling of personal liberty and unyielding 
assertion of the principle that government was made for the 
individual and not the individual for the government, has 
always been a dominant sentiment in Tennessee. 

The Cumberland constitution was founded upon unani- 
mous consent, and there were none of the restrictions upon 
suffrage which prevailed in the older States. 

Such also was the compact entered into in 1788 by those 
"inhabiting south of Holston, French Broad, and Big Pig- 
eon Rivers." 

The Constitution of 1796, which was the first framed for 
the government of all of the people of Tennessee, was marked 
with conservatism. Modeled on the organic law of North 
Carolina, it had some features which were irreconcilable 
with the democratic spirit of equality which pervaded and 
distinguished the earlier compacts. 

Representation was to be apportioned upon the basis of 
taxable inhabitants, and none but freeholders were eligible 
to the Assembly. Justices of the peace, the judges and 
attorney general were elected by the General Assembly. 
Coroners, sheriffs, trustees and constables were elected by 
the County Court. Taxation, while declared to be equal, 
discriminated in favor of landed interests. 

These features offer no just ground for impugning the 
consistency of the men who were leaders in the convention. 
In the declaration of abstract principles, in the bill of rights, 
they could give full way to the most advanced theory of 
popular government. 



* Constitutional History of Tennessee, Caldwell, p. 11. 



27 

In dealing with concrete questions, they wisely builded 
on the Constitution of North Carolina, with which they 
were familiar, made such changes as seemed obviously 
proper, and left it to experience to guide them in further 
development and the establishment of a system in full ac- 
cord with the principles they had enunciated. Besides, 
while the abstract idea of democracy was the same then as 
now, the w^orld has advanced in what is deemed essential 
for a true practical expression of it. They declared against 
perpetuities and monopolies as contrary to the genius of a 
free State, that no hereditary emoluments, privileges, or 
honors should ever be conferred, and required each legis- 
lator to take an oath that he would neither propose nor 
assent to anything that might appear injurious to the peo- 
ple, or that might have a tendency to lessen or abridge their 
rights and privileges. Mr. Jefferson said it w^as " the least 
imperfect and the most republican of the State constitu- 
tions. " 

Whatever may have been the undemocratic shortcomings 
of the constitution of 1796, it is quite certain that then the 
belief in individual liberty and the exercise of the largest 
degree of personal power of the people in the administra- 
tion of government existed. This has always been a domi- 
nant principle lying at the very foundation of political life 
in Tennessee. It has given a spirit of independent and con- 
scious strength to her people. It is so bound up with the 
thoughts, traditions and convictions of her people that noth- 
ing short of a social cataclysm will ever bring such a change 
as will sensibly diminish the power of the individual and 
its opportunities for expression in controlling the affairs of 
State. 

This principle, so fully in accord with the spirit of a free 
people, with an institutional government of the people, for 
the people, and by the people, has brought its embarrass- 
ments, and has even been a menace at times to good gov- 
ernment. This came from conditions never foreseen when 
our democratic institutions were so broadly framed. The 
country became convulsed with civil war, property was de- 
stroyed, society was upheaved and almost wrecked, the 
flower of manhood was cut off, and, what no one probably 



28 

had ever anticipated, nearly one-third of the population 
were, in a day, transmuted, uneducated, untrained in the 
habits and responsibilities of freemen, from a condition of 
servitude to one of controlling political power, and were 
incited by constant pressure to use their advantage for dis- 
organization and revenge. 

A part of these conditions are with us now, and they 
will in the same character, though in diminishing intensity, 
continue to abide with us for a time which, so far as we 
know, will be of indefinite duration. 

If we are to maintain the;democratic spirit and the dem- 
ocratic institutions, which have always characterized the 
policy of Tennessee, and which lie as a basic principle in 
her people's idea of government ; if we are to maintain our 
civilization with it, and both under a stable government, 
and a pure expression of the individual political function, 
then we must by education direct and make safe the forces 
that control our destiny, and must, by judicious encour- 
agement of conservative immigration, rather from our own 
Northern States than from abroad, maintain that racial 
preponderance which, in this State, preserves both blacks 
and whites from the fearful conditions which prevail in 
some of our sister Southern States. 

Emancipation. 

There was one feature in the Constitution of this, the 
most democratic of all the States, which at this time is of 
special interest. 

When Tennessee was admitted into the Union her popu- 
lation comprised i,ooo free negroes. By the Constitution 
of 1796, which permitted all freemen of the age of 21, who 
had been inhabitants of a county for six months previous 
to an election, to vote, this class of citizens had the right 
of the elective franchise, a right which was exercised until 
1834, at which time it was cut off, largely on account of the 
number, which had grown to nearly 5,000, and the threat- 
ened influx of liberated slaves from other States. * 

* lu 1830 Benton said: "The State of Missouri was kept out of the 
Union one whole year for the clause which prohibited the future entry 
and settlement of free people of color. And what have we seen since ? 
The actual expulsion of a great body of free colored people from the 



29 

In the constitutional convention of that year transpired 
an event of historic interest. Sixteen counties presented 
petitions with 1,804 signers, many of whom were slave- 
holders, some asking that all the children of slaves born 
after 1835 ^^ made free, and others, with what seems al- 
most a prophetic forecast, that all slavery should cease to 
exist in Tennessee from 1866. f 

A report was made, which unequivocally set forth the 
evils of slavery, denounced it in the strongest terms, and 
looked hopefully to its ultimate extinction as " an event 
devoutly and ardently desired by the wise and good in 
every part of our beloved country." 

If nothing were known but the fact of negro suffrage up 
to 1834, and that such a report, in such a body, and at 
such a time was made and dispassionately considered, these 

State of Ohio, and not one word of objection, not one note of grief. 
* * * The papers state the compulsory expatriation from Cincinnati 
at two thousand souls ; the whole number that may be compelled to ex- 
patriate from the State of Ohio at ten thousand. This is a remarkable 
event, paralleled only by the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and the 
Huguenots from France. * * * The Senator from Massachusetts 
(Mr. W.) so copious and encomiastic upon the subject of Ohio, so full 
and affecting upon the topic of freedom, and the rights of freemen in that 
State, was incomprehensibly silent and fastidiously mute upon the ques- 
tion of this wonderful expatriation — an expatriation which sent a genera- 
tion of free people from a republican State to a monarchical province." 

In the same debate Felix Grandy said : "I have in my hand the me- 
morial of two thousand free people of color, resident in Ohio, praying 
this Congress to provide them funds to enable them to remove to Canada, 
because they cannot remain in the State of Ohio on account of the sever- 
ity of the laws imposed upon them. * * * The State of Indiana has 
forwarded its memorial asking Congress for aid to remove the free people 
of color now in that State to Liberia." 
*********** 

In 1853 the Legislature of Illinois enacted : " If any negro or mulatto, 
bond or free, shall hereafter come into this State and remain ten days, 
with the intention of residing in the same, every such negro shall be 
deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and for the first offense shall be 
fined I50. * * * If the said negro or mulatto shall be found guilty 
and the fine assessed be not paid forthwith * * * the said justice 
shall at public auction proceed to sell said negro or mulatto to any person 
who will pay said fine and costs for the shortest time." 

(Address of Mr. Leigh Robinson, "The Richmond Howitzers," De- 
cember 13, 1892, pp. 48, 62.) 

■f Constitutional History of Tennessee. Caldwell, pp. 135-40. 



30 

would suffice as exponents of the truth that the Pennsyl- 
vanians and Virginians who settled that region, and their 
descendants, were imbued with the same principles and 
convictions which in the constitutional convention of 1788 
opposed the action of the Northern States, in combining 
with the Carolinas and Georgia against Pennsylvania, New 
Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia and imposing, in 
behalf of Northern ship-owners, the African slave trade on 
the country until 1808. 

It was not until that year (1834) that the apprentice 
emancipation act of Great Britain went into eifect. Neither 
Sweden, Denmark, nor France had abolished slavery in 
their colonies. Slavery yet lingered in New Jersey, New 
York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New 
Hampshire. * 

The men of that convention had in their minds the ex- 
ample of Washington, who had freed his slaves, and the 
utterances of those pioneer and great advocates of emanci- 
pation, Henry, Jefferson, Madison and Marshall. 

It will be remembered that this was the year that John 
Randolph, of Virginia, died, and liberated by will 300 
sjaves. t X 

*Von Hoist, I, 284, n. 

t Lundy, Life, p. 273. 

t John Randolph, by a will executed in the presence of Mark Alexan- 
der and Nathaniel Macon, had made Judge William Leigh the residuary 
devisee and legatee of his valuable estate, subject to certain specific lega- 
cies and provisions. The most important of these provisions was that of the 
means to enable the executor of the will to transport the slaves of the 
estate (set free by a pre^'ious clause), and settle them in some other State 
or Territory. He appointed Judge Leigh his executor. The will was con- 
tested on the ground of the mental unsoundness of the testator. Judge 
Leigh, well aware that the emancipation of these slaves had been the un- 
deviating purpose of Randolph's life, relinquished his absorbing interest 
under the will, that he might become a witness in support of it, and so, at 
least, accomplish the particular intent to which I have referred. To this 
extent the will was, in effect, sustained, and Judge Leigh was appointed 
commissioner to transport and settle the negroes as provided therein. 
The State selected for the settlement was Ohio, but when the commis- 
sioner landed his first interview was with a mob, formed to resist and 
repel the negro settlement. The clearest glimpse of the state of feeling 
is derived from the newspapers of the time. 

From the National Intelligencer, July 15, 1846 : 

"The Cincinnati (Ohio) Chronicle of the 9th instant says that the 
emancipated slaves of John Randolph, who recently passed up the Miami 



V 31 

The Philadelphians signalized it by anti-abolition riots, 
in which an African Presbyterian Church was destroyed, 
and negroes were beaten and killed. 

It was made memorable by the good people of Connecti- 
cut, who, after having incarcerated Prudence Crandall for 
admitting negroes into her school, contrary to law, at- 
tempted to burn her school-house, and stormed it with 
stones and crowbars.* 

New York made it historic with scenes of wild tumult, 
sacking the house of Tappan and other abolitionists, and 
turning upon terrified negroes the vengeance of a frenzied 
mob. t 

The memory of the bloody scenes of the Turner insur- 
rection was still fresh in the public mind. In that year 
Gerritt Smith, in a meeting of abolitionists, proclaimed : 
"It is not to be disguised that war has broken out between 
the South and the North not early to be terminated. "| 



canal to their settlement in Mercer county, Ohio, met with a warm recep- 
tion at Bremen. The citizens of Mercer county turned out en masse, and 
called a meeting, or rather formed themselves into one immediately, and 
passed resolutions to the effect that said slaves should leave in twenty-four 
hours, which they did, in other boats than the one which conveyed them 
there. They came back some twenty-three miles, at which place they 
encamped, not knowing what to do." 

From the National hitelligencer, July 24, 1846 : 

The Sidjiey (Ohio) Aurora of the nth says: These negroes (the 
Randolph negroes) remain on Colonel Johnson's farm, near Piqua. That 
paper condemns in decided terms the conduct of the citizens in Mercer in 
the late outbreak, and insists that "they should have made their objec- 
tions known before the land was purchased, and not waited until they 
had drawn the last cent they could expect out of the blacks — some 
$32,000 — and then raised an armed force and refused to let them take pos- 
session of their property as they have done. We look upon the whole 
proceeding as outrageous in the exireme, and the participators should be 
severely punished. What makes the thing worse is the fact that a num- 
ber of those, who were fiercest in their opposition to the blacks and 
loudest in their threats to shoot, etc., were the very ones who sold them 
land, received wages for constructing the buildings, and actually pocketed 
a large amount of money for provisions, not two weeks before the arrival 
of the poor creatures whom they have so unjustly treated." 

*Von Hoist, 1828-1646, p. 99. 

t Same, p. lor. 

J Von Hoist, 1828-1846, p. 87. 



32 

Garrison and his followers had denounced the constitu- 
tion as a '' covenant with death and agreement with hell." 

It was the year before Andrew Donelson, of Tennessee, 
died, emancipating twenty-one slaves by his will, that year 
of 1835 in which that orderly proceeding took place in 
Boston, called by the Boston Gazette "a meeting of gen- 
tlemen of property and standing from all parts of the city, ' ' 
in which Garrison was seized and dragged through the 
streets with a rope about his neck, and from which he 
found safe refuge only within the hospitable walls of a jail,* 
and two years before Governor Everett, of Massachusetts, 
suggested the expediency of prosecuting abolitionists, f 

But these events in Tennessee's history do not stand 
alone. Rev. Samuel Doak, a Virginian by birth and one 
of the men who contributed potentially toward shaping the 
destiny of Tennessee, was an avowed abolitionist in Hast 
Tennessee as early as 1800. 

Natiofial Intelligencer, August 10, 1846 : 

The RAND01.PH Negroes. — The last Piqua (Ohio) Register says : 
"These unfortunate creatures have again been driven from lands selected 
for them. As we noticed last week, an effort, which it was thought would 
be successful, was made to settle them in Shelby County, but like the pre- 
vious attempt in Mercer it has failed. They were driven away by 
threats of violence. About one-third of them, we understand, remained 
at Sidney, intending to scatter and find homes wherever they can. The 
rest of them came down here to-day, and are now at the wharf in boats. 
The present intention is to leave them wherever places can be obtained 
for them. We presume, therefore, they will remain in the State, as it is 
probable they will find situations for them between this and Cincinnati." 

National Intelligencer, August 15, 1846 : 

John Randolph Negroes. — "It is said that these unfortunate crea- 
tures have been again driven away by threats of violence from the lands 
which had been secured for them in Ohio, and that Judge Leigh, despair- 
ing of being able to colonize them in a free State, has concluded to send 
them to Liberia." — Richmond Republican. 

The negroes were finally allowed to occupy the land for which they had 
paid ; but what a very invigorating sympathy did these two emancipators 
excite in this free State ! Here was one Virginian who had emancipated 
bv will numerous slaves, and here was another who relinquished a large 
estate to secure the fulfillment of this part of the will. The response to 
them from the North was mob violence and contumelious scorn. 

(Address of Mr. Leigh Robinson, "The Richmond Howitzers," Decem- 
ber 13, 1892, pp. 20-22. ) 



*Von Hoist, 1828-1846, p. T02, Lundy, Life, 281. 
tLundy, Life, 286. 



33 

He and the Presbyterians of his neighborhood bought 
two negroes, freed and educated them, and the Union 
Presbytery of East Tennessee licensed and ordained them. 

His pupils, Jesse Lockhart and John Rankin, Tennes- 
seans by birth, became famous leaders in the cause of eman- 
cipation. 

Mr. Beecher, in reply to the question "Who abolished 
slavery?" is said to have answered, " Rev. John Rankin 
and his sons did it."* 

In 1801 a law was passed in Tennessee favoring volun- 
tary emancipation. A manumission society was formed in 
Tennessee in 1814, which in 1825 had over 570 members. 

In 1820 at Jonesborough, Tenn., Embree established the 
" Emancipator," the first newspaper in the United States 
whose avowed object was the abolition of slavery, f and in 
182 1 this was succeeded by the "Genius of Universal 
Emancipation," published by Lundy, which then was the 
only anti-slavery paper in America. X 

In 1824 3-t Columbia was formed "The Moral Religious 
Manumission Society of West Tennessee," which declared 
in the preamble to its Constitution that slavery "exceeds 
any other crime in magnitude." 

In 1827, of the 130 anti-slavery societies of America, 106 
were located in slave-holding States, and Tennessee alone 
had twenty-five, with 1,000 members, which was more 
than three times as many as there were in all New Eng- 
land and New York combined. § 

It was estimated by Abolitionists in 1828, the year that 
Lundy went to Boston and could hear of no Abolitionists 
resident there, || that in Tennessee three-fifths of the people 
were favorably disposed toward the principle of emancipa- 
tion. T[ 

In 1833 the Tennessee Manumission Society- memorial- 
ized Congress, praying for a prohibition of the internal 
slave trade, a law that all persons born thereafter in the 

* Life, Birney, 168. 
t Birney's Life, 77. 
X Lundy's Life, p. 21. 
^ Lundy's Life, 218. 
II Lundy's Life, p. 25. 
T[ Life, Birney, 79-80. 



34 

United States should be free, and that slavery should not 
be introduced in any State where it did not then exist, nor 
be suffered in any States thereafter admitted into the 
Union.* 

I record these things because they are facts not generally 
known, because they have been more or less ignored, or 
suppressed by those who have professed to write history, 
and because of the audacity with which some, whose an- 
cestors were as much responsible for slavery as were ours, 
cast slurs upon the descendants of slaveholders of the South. 
They go far to confirm the statement of Garrison made in 
the first number of the lyiberator, in 1831, that a greater revo- 
lution in public opinion had to be accomplished in the 
North than in the South, and that he found in the North 
* ' contempt more bitter, prejudice more stubborn and apathy 
more frozen than among the slave owners themselves. ' ' f 

In 1 83 1 John Quincy Adams, in presenting memorials 
asking for abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
stated that he would not give the proposed measure his 
support ; that "whatever might be his opinion of slavery 
in the abstract, in the District of Columbia, he hoped it 
would not become a subject of discussion in that house," 
and that ''the most healing medicines, when unduly ad- 
ministered, become the most deadly poison. ' ' | 

The abatement of emancipation sentiments in Tennes- 
see, and the apparent solidity that followed in favor of 
upholding the institution of slavery, was partially, if not 
entirely, superinduced by those "healing medicines," so 
persistently administered in such heroic doses. Move- 
ments for emancipation, however earnest, were made im- 
possible in a sovereign State in the face of threats from 
without of servile war, and the torch of the incendiary. § 



* Lrife, Ivundy, 193. 

t Von Hoist, 1828-46, p. 95. 

t Lundy, 348. 

I "The States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were engaged in 
practical movements for the gradual emancipation of their slaves. This 
movement continued until it was arrested by the aggressions of the Abol- 
itionists upon their voluntary action. This action was prompted by 
economical, rather than moral reasons. The Abolitionists, however, 
refused to accept an impending fact, and insisted upon convicting as 



35 

If the people of Tennessee had been left to a free develop- 
ment, it is my belief that emancipation would have come, 
as it came in the Northern States, from the operation of 
silent forces, and under conditions vastly more beneficent 
to both races. 

Certain it is that the people of Tennessee, from 1796 to 
i860, would have been as far from inaugurating slavery as 
any people upon the earth, and that they would have abol- 
ished it as promptly as any State in the Union did, if they 
had been affected with the same conditions. 

Individual Tennesseans, by voluntary act, freed more 
slaves and surrendered more property value in so doing 
than did any of the New England States by their acts of 
emancipation. The State, however, as a political organism, 
was confronted with portentous problems which lay in the 
immediate background, problems far vaster than the anni- 
hilation of values, problems which did not exist in New 
England, problems involving the social and political adjust- 
ment of different races, living in great numbers in daily 
contact, problems which then appalled the statesmen of the 
South, and which, now that slavery has ended, are demand- 
ing the wisdom of the entire nation, and the ultimate solu- 
tion of which no man but a rash one would undertake to 
exactly define. 

The lesson for us to learn from the dispassionate way in 
which the men of Tennessee in 1834, notwithstanding the 
fiery invectives then hurled against them, discussed and. 
dealt with this momentous question, is to meet these great 
issues as they press upon us, taking counsel of experience 
and wisdom, not prejudice and passion, and to bring to 
their settlement a large patriotism, a full sense of justice, 
to white and black, and fidelity to the demands of an en- 
during civilization. 

criminals those who were so well disposed to bring about the very result 
at which the}- themselves professed to aim. The consequences were such 
as might have been reasonably expected. Promised emancipation refused 
to submit itself to hateful abolition. Those three border States placed 
themselves at once upon the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, 
and, resenting as an insult the interference of the Northern intruders, 
abandoned the scheme which a calm view of considerations, tending to 
their own future welfare, had induced them to form." Origin of the 
late War. George Lunt, Boston, p. J4. See also Curtis' Constitutional 
History, Vol. II, p. 250-253. 



That much has been done and wisely done by both races 
is attested by this assembly enthusiastically participated in 
by all, without regard to previous condition, by that magnifi- 
cent structure which will adorn these grounds, reared by 
the colored citizens of Tennessee, and which is to contain 
at the Exposition, of which this is the inaugural day, the 
evidences of their progress in knowledge, skill, art, and 
industry. 

We of the South, who are native here, rejoice that these 
things are so, no less than do those citizens of Northern 
birth, who have cast their lot among us, and we hail with 
genuine satisfaction every manifestation of progress made 
by the colored race toward useful citizenship. 

There is not a son of Tennessee, unless he is out of com- 
munion with the spirit that dominates her people, who, 
however he may condemn the way it was effected, does not 
rejoice at the emancipation of the blacks and whites of the 
South, and who would, if he could, see this day celebra- 
ted, under a constitutional provision stultifying by its sanc- 
tion of slavery the declaration that all men are endowed 
with the inalienable right of liberty, a provision made by 
our ancestors North and South, under the lights of the time, 
and the pressure of expediency enforced by inherited con- 
ditions. 

That in these years since the war, characterized some- 
times by friction and fierce contest, sometimes by forbear- 
ance and wise concession, sometimes by liberal measures 
by which the whites onerated themselves with tax burdens 
for the benefit of the blacks, much has been accomplished, 
and that the trend has been, though often obscured and 
wavering, toward a better adjustment and greater prosperity, 
none but the pessimist will deny. 

In the public schools of Tennessee, sustained mainly by 
taxation of the whites, there were last year 100,479 colored 
children, and 1,778 colored teachers were employed. 

That the stage now reached would, with less of sorrow, 
heartburning and antagonism, have come much earlier but 
for the disturbing, exasperating, persistent, and often wicked 
interferences from without, is my solemn conviction. 

While I have endeavored to point to my white breth- 



37 

ren, how they may gather wisdom for the future, let me say 
to the colored people of Tennessee that the day has passed 
when you can look to outside power to push you to a posi- 
tion which you can neither achieve nor maintain. Such 
aids are but temporo.ry expedients, and when withdrawn the 
inherent weakness of the effort is made manifest. You 
must, by industry, economy, integrity, the practice of social 
virtues and fidelity to the demands of useful citizenship, 
achieve for yourselves, and what you thus win you can 
maintain, and in this struggle, your best interest will be 
served by cultivating harmony with those who have, and 
doubtless will continue to control the destiny of this State. 
There is no person who has the intellect to comprehend 
the principles of government, and the economic and social 
forces of civilization, and the honesty to express his belief, 
that will not say that, until the mass of the colored popu- 
lation is elevated by many years of training for the duties 
of citizenship, they will enjoy more liberties and blessings, 
under a civilization controlled by the Anglo-Saxon race, 
than they possibly could under a system which they them- 
selves dominated. 

From 1796 to i860. 

With such a people, animated by such principles, Ten- 
nessee bounded forward in a career of almost unparalled 
prosperity and glory. 

Starting youngest in the race in 1796 with her sister 
States, with but little accumulated wealth, she stood in 
i860, with a population of 1,109,801, tenth among the 
States of the Union, having outstripped all of the original 
thirteen but New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Mas- 
sachusetts, and with an assessed valuation of $382,495,200, 
or $344.65 per capita, which exceeded that of either Penn- 
sylvania, Vermont or Maine, and nearly equaled that of 
either Delaware, New Hampshire or New York. The 
assessed taxable property in Tennessee in i860 exceeded 
that of each of the New England and Middle States, except 
Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. 

In 1848 the tax valuation of Tennessee was $129,510,043; 
in 1859 it was $377,208,641, thus being nearly tripled in 
eleven years, and far outstripping the New England and 
Middle States in the ratio of increase. 



38 

Her banking capital was $8,500,000, and she had, by the 
brilliant record of her banks, all of which came trium- 
phantly through the crisis of 1832, in which nearly every 
other bank in the South and Southwest went to the wall, 
achieved a reputation for stability which made her rival 
New Orleans as the banking centre of the Southwest. 

Her sons and daughters enjoyed the best advantages for 
education. It was a land full of glorious promise. Civili- 
zation was sweeping onward with luminous wings. 

Her history in war and peace had been brilliant. Her 
pioneers with those of Kentucky had won the West from 
the Indian, the Spaniard and the French. But for their 
resolute courage in crossing the mountains and taking pos- 
session of the wilderness against the wishes of the older 
States, the American Republic by the treaty of peace with 
Great Britain would have been shut in upon the Atlantic 
coast. Spain and France, who wished her success to 
thwart England, also wished that territory for themselves. 
It was their firm and persistent stand that finally secured 
the mouth of the Mississippi. 

The nation has never recognized these inestimable debts 
to that heroic people. 

In the darkest hour of our struggle they volunteered, 
crossed the mountains, organized a military expedition, 
created an army and commander and won the battle of 
Kings Mountain, which Mr. JeiFerson said was "the joy- 
ful enunciation of that turn in the tide of success that ter- 
minated the Revolutionary War with the seal of independ- 
ence." 

From the appearance of Jackson upon the field of na- 
tional action down to the civil war, Tennessee occupied a 
comparative position in the republic out of proportion to 
her population and material strength. It was a triumph of 
the genius of her people. No State in the Union, except 
Massachusetts and Virginia, had exercised so large an in- 
fluence upon the civil affairs of the republic, and her mili- 
tary achievements were without rival. Without any re- 
quisition from the Government, she offered 2,500 volun- 
teers at the very beginning of the war of 1812. Tennes- 
seans fought almost alone the Creek war, and her Governor, 



39 

Wm. Blount, raised $370,000 on his own responsibility for 
its prosecution. Led by their own gallant Jackson, they 
contributed more than all others to the victory that crowned 
the American arms at New Orleans. Another Tennessean, 
Gen. Gaines, was the next most brilliant figure in that war, 
who, by his victory of Fort Erie, first checked the invaders, 
flushed with their success in the East. Tennessee fur- 
nished in all in the war of 1812 27,833 troops; and when, 
in the Mexican war, 2,800 volunteers were called for, 
30,000 offered their services. She had given to the country 
two Presidents, two Secretaries of War, one Attorney- 
General, one Secretary of the Treasury, two Postmasters 
General, two Speakers of the House of Representatives, 
one presiding officer of the Senate, one Supreme Judge, 
two ministers to Russia, one minister to Spain. No other 
State except Virginia had such a brilliant career. 

Many of her sons, such as Benton, of Missouri ; Tipton, 
of Indiana; Houston, of Texas; Claiborne, of Louisiana; 
Sharkey and Yerger, of Mississippi, and Gwin, of Califor- 
nia, had attained great eminence in other States. 

After the formation of the Whig party, for successive 
Presidential elections, Tennessee was the battle ground of 
the nation. 

From 1837 to 1853, with the exception of the two suc- 
cessive terms of Jones, in 1841 and 1843, ^^^^ Whigs and 
Democrats alternated in the control of the State, the ma- 
jority rarely ever exceeding 1,500. 

Her public men and orators were known throughout the 
length and breadth of the land, and stood high in the 
councils of their parties and the esteem of the people . 

Carroll, Cannon, White, Haywood, Overton, Catron, 
Grundy, Amstrong, Crockett, Foster, Turney, Bell, Jones, 
Folk, Campbell, Trousdale, Cave Johnson, Nicholson, the 
two Browns, Henry, Haskell, Marshall, Andrew Johnson, 
Gentry, Harris, Hatton, Nelson, McKinney, Wright, 
Brownlow, and Maynard were household names, known to 
fame throughout the Union. 

No State ever had so many and such skilled public de- 
bators. Parties were closely matched in ;strength, and 
were compelled to put forth their foremost men. The 



40 

sharp contests, with doubtful victory, afforded opportuni- 
ties for the ambitious of both parties, and brought out and 
developed men who had the nerve and ability for leaders. 
A nomination did not mean an election. It was a storm 
from start to finish. There was no complicated political 
machinery, no manipulation of votes. The battle ground 
was the entire State, and all of her people, men, women 
and children, were in the fray, and cheered their cham- 
pions in the doubtful struggle. The people held the party 
in power to strict accountability. The numbers were so 
nearly even that a blunder of administration, or disparity 
in leadership, turned the scales of victory. Happy is the 
State where parties are so nearly equal in numbers that 
they dare not commit a wrong, and so equal in integrity 
and ability that the public weal is safe in cither's keeping. 

The War. 

Her inhabitants were almost all native American, with 
less than 2 per cent, of foreign born. Sprung from revo- 
lutionary sires and the heroes of 1812, they were filled 
with an idolatrous love for the Union, whose flag to them 
was emblematic. Its blue field spangled with equal stars 
portrayed a constellation of inextinguishable sovereign 
States, set in one harmonious system, in a firmament of 
equal spacing, with no one encroaching on the other. Its 
white stripes denoted the purity of their faith, and the red, 
the crimson flush with which the sons of Tennessee had 
always dyed the sacrificial altar of their country. 

The irrepressible conflict between the North and the 
South threatened a disruption of the Union. Mr. Lincoln, 
who was regarded as a sectional candidate, and who received 
no votes in the State of Tennessee, was elected. Southern 
States began to secede, and their Senators and Represent- 
atives withdrew from the capital of the nation. Tennessee 
was confronted with the momentous issue which tore the 
heartstrings of her people. Events followed in rapid suc- 
cession, and as the situation was altered, so changed the 
sentiments and action of her people. 

On Feb. 9 was defeated the call for the convention to con- 
sider the relations between Tennessee and the Government 



41 

of the United States, the vote for disunion delegates being 
24,749, and that for Union delegates being 88,803. 

The Confederacy was fonned, Sumter was fired on. Pres- 
ident Lincoln called for volunteers, and an invasion of the 
South became a certainty. 

Gov. Harris had already stated the case of the South in 
that brilliant message which electrified the people of Ten- 
nessee. 

A majority of the people of Tennessee believed that, pre- 
vious to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, each State 
was a separate and independent government, and that the 
Federal Union was a compact made by the States, in which 
each reserved all the rights and powers incident to sover- 
eignty which were not expressly conferred upon the gen- 
eral government, or were necessary for the exercise of some 
power expressly granted. 

The Constitution recognized property in slaves, and made 
it the duty of States to deliver fugitives to their owners. 

This had been declared by the Supreme Court of the 
United States, which said that " no word can be found in 
the Constitution which gives Congress a greater power over 
slave property, or which entitles property of that kind to 
less protection than property of any other description. The 
only power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of 
guarding and protecting the owner in his rights." * 

Still ringing in their ears was the farewell address of 
Jackson, in which he said that : 

" Each State has the unquestionable right to regulate its 
own internal concerns, according to its own pleasure, and 
while it does not interfere with the rights of the people of 
other States, or the rights of the Union, every State must 
be the sole judge of the measures proper to secure the safety 
of its citizens and promote their happiness, and all efforts 
on the part of the people of other States to cast odium upon 
their institutions, and all measures calculated to disturb 
their rights of property, or to put in jeopardy their peace 
and internal tranquility, are in direct opposition to the spirit 
in which the Union was formed and must endanger its 
safety." f 

* Jackson's Farewell Address. 

t Dred Scott :■. Sandford, 19 How., 393, 452. 



42 

The Republican party dominated the country and many 
of its members had declared that there was " an irrepress- 
ible conflict' ' between the free and slave State, ' 'and whether 
it be long, peaceful or bloody, the struggle shall go on, un- 
til the sun shall not rise upon a master, or set upon a slave. ' ' 

The people of the South had by successive concessions 
agreed to the exclusion of slave property from the larger 
portion of the territory which they and their fathers had 
helped to acquire. A majority of the Northern States had 
in effect destroyed that provision in the Constitution that 
"No person held to service or labor in one State under the 
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence 
of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such 
service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the 
party to whom such service or labor may be due. ' ' 

Extradition of those whose crimes grew out of the 
slavery question was refused. Owners in pursuit of their 
own slaves were indicted and incarcerated. Emissaries 
had been sent into the Southern States to run off slaves 
and arouse them to servile war. Property amounting in 
value to millions of dollars had been carried away by what 
was known as ' ' the underground railway. ' ' 

John Brown had invaded a sovereign State and killed its 
citizens. Some leaders had proclaimed the motto, "Alarm 
to the sleep, fire to the dwellings, poison to the food and 
water of slaveholders. ' ' 

The decision of the Supreme Court was repudiated and 
rights guaranteed by the Constitution were assailed ' ' from 
the floor of each house of Congress, the pulpit, the hust- 
ings, the school-room, their State Legislatures, and through 
the public press." 

A majority of the people of Tennessee, believing that 
the Union, as established by the fathers, no longer existed, 
reversed on June 8, their former action by a majority of 
57,675, and waiving the right of secession, proclaimed anew 
the doctrine of revolution of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, "that governments derive their just powers from 
the consent of the governed, and that whenever any form 
of government becomes destructive of the ends for which 
it was created, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish 



43 

it, and to institute a new government, laying its founda- 
tion on such principles, and organizing its powers in such 
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety 
and happiness," and on May 7 united their fortunes with 
their brethren of the South. 

A large proportion of her population, living mainly in 
the eastern part of the State, where the institution of slavery 
had never taken deep root, controlled either by a different 
view of the Constitution or a sentiment for the Union which 
overshadowed all other considerations, with equal earnest- 
ness, espoused the cause of the Federal Government. 

When the volcano of civil war burst forth, both sides 
threw themselves into the crater of its seething passions, 
reckless of everything but the principles for which they con- 
tended, and with a courage that showed that they were wor- 
thy to uphold the prestige of the men who achieved and 
maintained for Tennessee the proud title of the Volunteer 
State. A number of counties sent more soldiers in the field 
than they had voters. One hundred and fifteen thousand 
rushed into the ranks of the Confederacy, and, although 
the quota called for was only 1,560, there enlisted in the 
armies of the Union 31,000 white troops. 

Tennessee furnished to the Confederate army thirty-nine, 
and to the Federal army eight general officers. 

To the South she gave Maury, and to the North Farra- 
gut, whose names and fame have never been eclipsed in the 
annals of the American navy. The time allotted to this 
occasion would not suffice to call the roll of those who won 
immortal renown . It is not necessar\^, for their names are 
ever fresh in our memories. 

The history of the war cannot be written without record- 
ing their deeds. The thinned ranks of scarred and maimed 
veterans who returned, needed no one to tell the scenes of 
carnage through which they had passed. The soil of 
Tennessee has been made sacred by the blood of her sons 
shed in 272 officially reported battles and skirmishes, and 
in other engagements, bringing the whole number up to 
408. 

Tennesseans reunited, with no contest except in generous 
rivalry, to advance the welfare of their State, yet cherish- 



44 

ing, but without bitterness, these proud memories, with 
one voice proclaim : 

" Fold up the banner. Smelt the guns ! 
Love rules. Her gentle purpose runs. 
A mighty mother turns in tears 
The pages of her battle years, 
Lamenting all her fallen sons." 

The people of Tennessee on both sides of that conjflict, 
who sustained their convictions to the last extremity, vin- 
dicated their claims to the hightest standard of American 
citizenship. If, moved by fears for self or pelf, they had 
surrendered their principles, they would have been unfit to 
encumber the earth. What American would have had 
them to do otherwise, holding the faith they did, a faith 
which they had a perfect right to hold ? 

Would anyone, if he could, reverse their action, and 
contemplate with equanimity the future of this country in 
the keeping of the coldblooded offspring of base and cal- 
culating weaklings, who deserted the traditions and politi- 
cal teachings of their fathers ? 

Even looking back through the tears which these sad 
memories evoke, memories of suffering and distress, not 
merely of strong men, but of helpless women and children, 
memories of a carnival of death, when there was no sign 
upon any lintel, but the destroying angel with impartial 
tread came to every household, Tennesseans of to-day would 
not wrong the heroic spirit of that gallant people by wish- 
ing that those of either side had sought safety, by bowing 
to the storm until its fur>^ was spent. Thc)^ would not for 
all the cost surrender the glorious heritage of that strife. 

"It is meet then to hold in remembrance those who died 
in that war, opposed to each other, and to reconcile them 
by offering prayers, forasmuch as we ourselves are also 
reconciled. For not through malice and hatred did they 
lay hands upon each other, but through their evil fortune. 
And of these facts we are ourselves the living witnesses, for 
being of the same family with them, we have forgiven each 
other for what we have done and suffered." . 

Thus spoke Socrates, to the Athenians, after the civil 
war. These words to-day find echo in every generous 
heart in Tennessee. 



45 

Devastation swept over the State, and it was prostrate, 
with its wealth destroyed, its fair manhood, which consti- 
stuted its chief strength and hope cnt down, society over- 
thrown, whole families being wiped out of existence, and 
its civilization threatened with destruction. 

The tax valuation in Tennessee in 1869, after four years 
of recuperation, was $155,821,611 less than when the war 
began. The slave valuation in i860 was $114,976,374. 
Thus, in addition to the loss of the slaves, there was in 
1869 an unrepaired loss of $40,845,238. 

The war forced every State bank, with the exception of 
the Northern Bank of Tennessee, at Clarksville, into liquida- 
tion. The banking capital, which, in i860, was $8, 500, 000, 
was almost annihilated. 

But worse than all, society was upheaved, property own- 
ers were disfranchised, and the duties and responsibilities 
of citizenship were thrust upon a people just emerged from 
slavery. These emancipated people, without a dollar of 
their own, with all the crime, poverty, ignorance and dis- 
turbing conditions that were naturally incident to their sud- 
den political transition, were precipitated upon the poorest, 
most wretched, and most disorganized section of the country. 

Recuperation. 

It was like making brick without straw, but the same 
heroism that sustained the people of Tennessee throughout 
those four years of blood, nerved them for the work of re- 
building their waste places. The gain up to 1870 was 
almost imperceptible, the population having increased from 
i860 to 1870 only 13.4 per cent. 

In that year the people of Tennessee got control of their 
own affairs. 

From 1870 to 1880 the population increased 22.55 P^^ 
cent., which was a greater ratio than that of any of the 
New England or Middle States, except Rhode Island and 
New Jersey. 

From 1870 to 1890 the population increased 508,998. 
Of this increase that of the American born was 508, 285. 

In 1890, out of her entire population, there were only 
1,486 persons of 10 years of age and over that could not 
speak English. 



46 

From 1880 to 1890, the white population increased 197,- 
806, and for the same period the negro population increased 

27,527- 

Of her 20,029 foreign born population in 1890, 16,861 
were of the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic blood. 

Of her entire population in 1890, only 2,249 were aliens. 

In 1890, Tennessee had more citizens who had been 
United States soldiers than did any of the New England 
States, except Massachusetts. 

Tennessee is the State of the family and the home. Of 
her 334, 194 families, 144,560 occupied their own homes, 
free of incumbrance. 

There were only ten other States in the Union exceeding 
this figure, and none exceeding the percentage. 

Of the 183,726 families occupying farms, 103,346 pos- 
sessed their own, and free from incumbrance. 

These figures are significant, and give eloquent and as- 
suring promise for the future, when it is considered that 
the time may come, and at no distant day, when there will 
be a contest for the maintenance of American institutions. 
In that day their strength and perpetuity will depend upon 
the devotion of those who cling to them with hereditary 
love. In that day Tennessee will be a tower of strength to 
the nation. 

The estimated value of all property in Tennessee, by the 
census of i860, was $493,903,892. 

The census of 1880 showed the estimated value of all 
property in Tennessee to be $705,000,000, thus showing a 
gain notwithstanding the losses by the war of $211,000,000. 

The estimated value of all property in Tennessee, by the 
census of 1890, was $887,956,143. 

The increase from 1880 to 1890 was 26 percent. An in- 
crease at the same rate would make the value of all prop- 
erty in Tennessee in 1896, $1,026,477,303. 

From 1880 to 1890 the amount of capital invested in 
manufactures increased $31,000,000, and the money paid 
to employees in them increased for the same period $11,- 
000,000. 

In 1890 the percentage of all mortgages in force in the 
State was only 8. 80 of the actual value of its property, and 



47 

there were thirty -two other States and Territories of the 
Union which had a greater percentage. 

The average interest charged on these mortgages was 
only 6 per cent., while that of thirty-seven other States 
and Territories exceeded that rate, and many of them 
largely. 

Her banking capital has increased from the close of the 
war from $350,000 to $21,000,000. 

The capacity of her iron furnaces is 600,000 tons, which 
is a third more than the entire production of the United 
States in i860. The census shows that from 1880 to 1889 
there was an increase in the production of iron ore of 
380,022 tons, and of coal of 1,430,558 tons. The last re- 
port of the Commissioner of Labor shows that, notwith- 
standing the business depression of 1895, as compared with 
1889, the production of coal has increased 1,394,031 tons, 
and that the increase from 1894 to 1895 was 138,841 tons. 

The increase in the production of coke in 1894, as com- 
pared with 1880, was 162,037 tons. 

An increase even more striking took place in the devel- 
opment of the commercial demand for Tennessee marble, 
which, in variety, beauty, density, and crushing resistance 
is greater than that of any marble produced in the world, 
and for exposure to moisture and high temperatures sur- 
passes granite. Within two years, a new industry, that of 
developing our phosphate deposits, has sprung up. In 1895, 
49,000 tons were shipped. The attention of the world has 
been attracted to the high grade petroleum of this State, 
which is all the more sought for on account of the con- 
stantly decreasing output of other fields. Many wells are 
being sunk, and this promises to be a great source of pros- 
perity and wealth to our State. 

Notwithstanding the great financial depression, Tennes- 
see had seventy-four less failures in 1895 than in 1894, with 
$494,615 less liabilities. There was in the same period an 
increase of failures in a number of the Northern States. 

The relations between labor and capital have been far 
more harmonious than in the North, and strikes have been 
few and not serious, and chacterized by no lawlessness. 

Liberal legislation protecting laborers has gone far toward 



48 

removing causes for friction, and producing this happy 
result. 

Conclusion. 

With such evidences of prosperity, with her genial cli- 
mate, so equable in winter, so refreshing in the hottest sum- 
mer, with the cool breezes fanning the broad bosom of her 
plateaus and her mountain ranges, with her lands of unsur- 
passed fertility, adapted to the greatest variety of produc- 
tion, with her 5,000 square miles of coal, inexhaustible 
stores of iron and marble, her 2,700 miles of navigable 
rivers, exceeding those of any other State in the Union, her 
vast forests of commercial timber, Tennessee proudly chal- 
lenges the attention of the world, and throws wide open her 
doors, inviting the people of all countries to come and par- 
take of her hospitality, study her institutions, the character 
of her people, and her natural resources, and all who will 
accept and uphold in their integrity American institutions, 
to cast their lot with us, and be partakers of the increasing 
prosperity, happiness and honor which the future holds in 
store. 

While striving for material progress, mindful that it is 
not wealth, population and splendor that constitute the 
strength of a State, that moral and intellectual forces 
achieve the glory of a people, and that the maintenance of 
our institutions is our sheet anchor of safety, let us, in en- 
tering upon this new centur)', reverentially receive again, 
in solemn charge, the farewell words of the Sage of the 
Hermitage : 

"You have the highest of human trusts commited to 
your care. Providence has showered on this favored* land 
blessings without number, and has chosen you, as the 
guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the 
human race. May he, who holds in his hands the destinies 
of nations, make you worthy of the favors he has bestowed, 
and enable you, with pure hearts, and pure hands, and 
sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend, to the end of time, 
the great charge he has committed to your keeping. ' ' 



